\m
         PENNSYLVANIA

REPORT OF SELECT COMMITTEE OF ^OUbE
RELATIVE TO USE OF MERCURY IN PRACTICE
OF MEDICINE 
 
REPORT
&,,  -^y^£^
SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE,
RELATIVE TO
THE  USE OF  MERCURY
IN THE
PRACTICE OF MEDICINE.
Printed by order of the House of Representatives, March 19, 1845.
       HARRISBURG:
J. M. G. LESCURE, PRINTER TO THE STATE.
           1845. 
.  > . N >
•    • J
<5*v

  l&4 5~
<J.|
NATIONAL LIBR-HY  OF  MEDlClN?
;:^. BETHESUA 14, MD*
#.
. * •■■•
.*-.- •
til 
REPORT.
  Mr.  Samuels,  from the select committee to  whom  was  referred  the  petition of
citizens of Westmoreland county, praying for the  passage of a law prohibiting the  use
of mercury, in the practice of medicine, begs leave to report:

  That they have given the matter referred to them all the attention and patient investi-
gation which its importance demands, so far  as the time allotted them would permit.
In communicating the result of their researches, they will endeavor to avoid all techni-
calities, where practicable,  and make truth and brevity their guide.
  To arrive at just conclusions in a matter of so  much importance as the one at issue,
various considerations have to  be borne in mind—conflicting opinions and biased state-
ments examined, and  theories, often fortified in  error, analized, in  order  to sift  the
wheat from the  chaff.   To effect  these  objects  in as concise  and  comprehensive  a
manner as possible, will be the object aimed at  by the committee.   How far  they will
be able to succeed will be for others to judge.
  In pursuit of this object  it will be necessary first to inquire into the merits and  de-
merits of the agent in question—whether or no its  well known therapeutic properties are
overbalanced or neutralized by its acknowledged deleterious effects on the system, under
peculiar circumstances; and if the investigation should lead  to the conclusion that its
sanitive properties predominate,  or, in other  words, that the class of mercurial reme-
dies constitute a valuable order in the materia medica, then it may become necessary
to enquire into the source of the popular prejudice which is known to exist against their
use.  In the pursuit of this inquiry it is proper to  premise that the  use of this potent
agent is supposed to be confided,  in all cases, to  scientific  and  skilful hands.   To
charge home on the agent -the  faults  and want  of skill in the power  that wields it,
would be the acme of folly.
  The  question before the committee is, "whether or no the  use  of  mercury, as  a
therapeutic agent, ought to  be totally prohibited."   A brief description of this singular
metal, and a few of its combinations, before we proceed to the discussion of its merits,
may not be  inapt.
  Mercury, in its metalic  state, is  subject to all the general laws  that govern other
metals.  When  deprived of its latent caloric,  by subjecting it to a temperature of forty-
seven degrees below zero, it becomes solid, is maleable, and may be beat  out with  a
hammer.  It  is  also to  some  extent ductile, and differs but little in  appearance  or
properties from lead.   At the ordinary temperature of the  atmosphere it  melts, and
from its great specific gravity,  becomes extremely fluid, so much so that, under certain
circumstances, it will penetrate freely and rapidly through  the pores of wood ; and in
this state it  is met with in the shops of the druggists.   However, as  it possesses no
medicinal properties  in the metalic state, it would  be foreign to our present purpose
to dwell longer under this head.
  It is only in its various combinations that mercury is employed as  a remedial agent.
The number of compounds of  which it is succeptible, is only equalled by the diversity
of effect produced on  the  animal economy,  by their internal or external application.
The limits prescribed us  will permit us merely to  glance at this most  important part of
our subject. 
4
  The  most usual form in which mercury is administered, as an internal remedy, is
that of the hydrargyri-submurias, or calomel.  In  this form it is employed for various
purposes, but most frequently as a mild and efficient cathartic.
  Its peculiar action on the liver, renders  its employment in hepatic and bilious affec-
tions almost indispensable,  while its  de-obstruent and discussive properties point it out
as a powerful remedy in schyrrus and other chronic affections of the glandular system.
In combination with scilla maritima and other  hydragogues, it is an important agent in
the cure of ascitas  and  hydrothorax.   Combined  with  diaphoretics  it increases  their
effect in an eminent degree;  while  in  combination with other anthelmintics, or even
given alone, it is proved, by experience, to be one of the most efficient agents  for the
expulsion of tinea capitis and other intestinal worms, in  the whole range of the materia
medica.   In the cure of certain dangerous, and but too  prevalent diseases,  particularly
among the dissipated classes, its efficacy is too well  known to require further notice at
the hands of your committee.
  In cynanche  trachealis the sanative effects of full doses of calomel are alone sufficient
to rescue that invaluable agent from the sweeping anathema prayed for by the petition-
ers.   In this most  fearful of infantile diseases, the free use of calomel may  justly be
termed  the  sheet-anchor of hope.   Its sedative and anti-phlogistic  properties, when
exhibited  in doses  sufficient to produce nausea and emesis, render it an instrument, in
the hands of the skilful practitioner, to  rescue thousands of  innocents from an untimely
grave.
  The different combinations in  which mercury is employed as an external application
in the cure of psora, tetter, and  other cutaneous  affections, are too numerous and too
well known, however interesting and important, to require particular notice at this time.
Neither do the  committee deem it necessary, even to name, all the different  mercurial
preparations occasionally used as  internal remedies.   There is,  however, one  other
combination which may require  some  notice at our hands.
  The hydrargyri oximurias, or bi-chloride of mercury, familiarly known by the  name
of corrosive sublimate,  is perhaps, the most active form in which this potent agent  is
employed internally.  An over-dose of this deadly poison, taken accidentally into the
stomach, say four or five grains, proves almost  necessarily fatal—and here it may not
be amiss to state, though a little out of place, that the white or albuminous portion of
eggs,  taken in profuse quantities, is its best antidote.
  The corrosive sublimate, when skilfully administered, is  nevertheless a safe and effi-
cient remedy.   In  certain  peculiar  diseases before alluded  to, its use is almost indis-
pensible—and here, in  connection, we cannot refrain from adverting to  the  fact, that
this potent and dangerous article constitutes an ingredient in a large class of quack nos-
trums that are  daily hawked about  the country and sold, as a cure-all,  to unthinking
individuals, who are silly enough to buy them.   It  composes the active  ingredient  in
the celebrated panacea of that prince of quacks, Doctor Swahn, of which thousands  of
bottles are sold annually, under  the  assurance of its containing nothing  but vegetable
extracts!  The health—even the lives of thousands of  individuals have doubtless been
sacrificed at the shrine  of this modern Juggernaut,  and it  is  not  impossible, but that
some of the petitioners  themselves may have laid aside the cup  from which they had
just quaffed the deadly  poison, to take up the  pen and sign the memorial before us !
   That the panacea contains  corrosive sublimate can no longer be denied ; as  the un-
erring test of chemistry has  repeatedly succeeded in extracting it from the nostrum,
procured  fresh from the laboratory of the  proprietor, and producing it in the metallic
state.   And the fact of  this man's going before a magistrate, and,  under the sanction of
an oath, denying the existence of mercury in any shape,  in the  nostrum  in question,
only affords a melancholy instance of  the depravity  of  man!
   Your committee have thus briefly glanced at both the sanitive and deleterious proper-
ties of the article in question.  That an agent so powerful, exercising almost unlimited
control over the organic functions, should, when improperly applied, be productive of
corresponding evil, will be readily conceded—and that  a large amount of mischief has
been done, will not be  denied.  But that  the occasional abuse of a valuable agent has
ever yet been deemed sufficient  grounds for the  prohibition of its use, your committee 
5
have yet to learn.   As well might the surgeon be forbidden  the use of a keen bistoury
or lancet, for fear of cutting too deep—or the barber the employment of a keen razor,
to prevent him from cutting the throat of his employer!
   In short, it may be laid down as a position that defies refutation, that an agent that
can do no harm can do  no good!  If the principle of excluding from  the materia
medica all articles that may do harm were adopted, the result would be that the practi-
tioner would be confined  to a very meagre  class of  means,  and those of a useless and
inert  character.  His hands would be tied, and  while,  with anxious solicitude he
watched over the effects of his bread pills  and his gum water, he would be compelled
to stand by, with folded arms, while contagion, gangrene  and death stalked fearfully
over the land, deprived of the power of even attempting to  save.
   Far better would it be,  to strike from  the list of  the learned  professions the title of
M. D., and at one  fell swoop banish  from  among  mankind  the use of all  remedial
agents—proclaim at once, over the length and breadth of the  land,  that we, in  the
superlative acumen  of legislative  wisdom, in the nineteenth  century,  had made  the
startling discovery that the result of all the investigations and experience of ages, from
the days of Galen and iEsculapius, down to the present eventful epoch, amount to noth-
ing but dross, to be ground into  ashes and scattered to  the winds.
   It is natural  that prejudices  should subsist among mankind.   The greatest blessings
that have yet been conferred on a suffering world have been received with reluctance,
or rejected with scqrn, by the biased or skeptic portions of the community—even the
invaluable revelation of the inspired Jenner, which has nearly  swept from the catalogue
of diseases that awful scourge  of the human race, the small pox,  was not exempt from
the common lot.  And at the present enlightened  day, when the experience of half a
century has  fully established its benign influence, vaccination still  has its opponents.
And thus it will continue to  be,  with regard to all great discoveries,  as  long  as  the
human mind is constituted as it now is.
   But why the mercurials should  be selected as the target at which  the  envenomed
shafts of  the interested or misguided are to be pointed, your committee are at a loss to
conceive.  It is well known that the materia medica embraces  a large class of remedies,
both mineral and  vegetable, possessing far greater activity on the system than the one
in question.   Are the memorialists unaware of the direful effects  of arsenic, when im-
properly administered, eithe,r in large or small doses—or are they ignorant of its exten-
sive and daily use as a medicament ?  Are they aware of the properties of the. muriate
of gold, the nitrate of silver, the sulphate of copper, or the prussiate of potash ?   Or,
entering the domains of the "vegetable kingdom," among the mazes of which certain
sects of modern innovators delight to revel—are they unacquainted with the properties
of the belladonna, the hyaciamus,  the strichnus nux  vomica, the stramonium, the colo-
cynth, the elaterium, and a host of other members of the vegetable  tribe, the one-half
of a grain of the extract of which may prove a dangerous or  even fatal dose ?   Is  the
prusic acid, extracted from the kernel of the peach stone, one drop of which applied to
the tongue or eye produces instant death,  unknown to  them ?  Have they not heard of
the oil of croton, one drop of which is a  dangerous dose ?  Or  of the sulphate and
acitate of morphia, of which  the  dose is  one-eighth  of a  grain ?   And are  they  not
aware that all the above enumerated articles, and many others of equal activity,  are in
daily use, and frequently  attended with the most beneficial results?  If not, we  would
respectfully suggest to them the propriety of devoting a portion of their attention to  the
subject, in preference to embarking on a  crusade  against one of the safest and  most
efficient remedies on the list of the materia medica.
   For the above, and various other reasons, the  committee deem  it inexpedient that
the prayer of the petitioners should be granted.

     They, therefore, offer the following resolution,  viz :
   Jleso/crd,  That the committee  be discharged from  the further consideration of  the
 subject. 
 
I   .   ..;




           i 
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE
NLM 0327MLm  T
NLM032744999